“The teams that I played on, the captains were selected by their teammates at the end of the year, which I think is a huge honor for guys to get selected by their teammates,” Pruitt said. “It says a lot about them.”

Former Vols coach Butch Jones had the same system last season, as UT had weekly captains. Jones, who was fired on Nov. 12 after a blowout loss to Missouri, did name permanent captains in 2016 – the lone time the now-Alabama intern did so in his five-year tenure.

“I’m sure we’ll probably have captains by the week, based off of who we think are good leaders and who gives us the best chance to have success,” Pruitt said. “Towards the end of the year, when the season is over with, we’ll let the team vote on it.”

Leadership has been a discussion point throughout the spring as Pruitt and the Vols approach the final week of spring practices. Pruitt has mostly declined to comment on specific players, including in discussing which players have emerged as leaders through his first spring session as the head coach at Tennessee.

After UT’s first scrimmage on April 7, Pruitt dove into a commentary on how a team can either be led by players or led by coaches in discussing how a team improves body language,

“Sometimes you have teams that have really great leaders on the team,” Pruitt said. “I’ve coached on teams and there’s been one individual, didn’t matter if he played offense or defense, when he said, ‘Let’s go,’ it affected both sides of the ball. I’ve coached on teams that there were several leaders in the group, on either side of the ball.”

Pruitt also outlined how two teams he coached that won national titles were more led by the coaching staff than the players.

“Football’s a physical game and everybody’s trying impose their will and make the other team quit and all that,” he said. “A lot of times you can see the look in their eyes … They kind of start accepting the fact that they’re defeated. And I’ve seen staffs that I’ve been on that kind of bring guys out of that and find a way.

“When they couldn’t find a way, we helped them find a way.”

What Tennessee’s leadership looks like – and whether it comes more from players or coaches – remains to be seen as spring winds down with UT’s spring game on Saturday.

“So we have to figure out what kind of team we have,” Pruitt said. “Do we have guys that have leadership that can affect everybody else that way? Do they even know how to do it? And if they don’t we have to be the ones that teach them."